Gene Hackman's Western Roles Ranked

Gene Hackman was an American original: an everyman actor with unremarkable physical features who became exceptional through the sheer force of his authenticity. Actors can drive themselves nuts trying to be believable, to simply inhabit a scene as a human being with sincere purpose, but Hackman was only ever genuine. He was also prolific, which means that his gift was occasionally squandered in some less-than-stellar films, but we watched them anyway because the promise of a new Hackman performance was worth the time. Now that he's left us for good at the age of 95, those hours we spent watching dreck like "Loose Cannons" or "The Replacements" hardly feel like a waste.

Hackman appeared in all kinds of movies, and excelled at so many different types of roles that he was never closely associated with one particular genre. But there was something about Westerns that perfectly suited his unfussy performance style. The rugged lack of pretension inherent in films set during America's vigorous pursuit of its manifest destiny allowed Hackman to be dazzlingly, sometimes frighteningly ordinary. The men he played in the seven Westerns in which he starred are very capable of violence, but some are more prone to indulge this viciousness than others. They've all witnessed the awful toll of lawlessness, and, to varying extents, look to enforce some kind of order on the worlds they inhabit.

All of Hackman's Westerns carry a charge. Whether they can maintain that charge when he's not on screen is a different matter. Though they're all worth watching, here are Gene Hackman's Westerns ranked from the least effective to the very best.

Acclaimed Swedish director Jan Troell ("The Emigrants" and "The New Land") made his Hollywood filmmaking debut with this low-key Western about a rancher (Hackman) who purchases a mail-order bride (Liv Ullman) to help him raise cattle and, eventually, a family as unromantically as possible. Because Troell is far more interested in human behavior than ticking off the narrative boxes of what moviegoers expect from a Western, the film offers Hackman and Ullman ample opportunity to develop their characters — and they're quite good together. Unfortunately, the story Troell's telling (via a screenplay from Marc Norman, who'd go on to win the Oscar for writing "Shakespeare in Love), isn't terribly interesting. The always interesting Susan Tyrell, Harry Dean Stanton, and Sam Bottoms fail to enliven what is, if nothing else, a beautifully shot misfire (courtesy of cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth).

This Americanized Spaghetti Western from television director Don Medford brings the bloodshed, but decides to wallow in the cruelty of its characters rather than be, y'know, fun. This is a shame because it's got a nifty premise. Oliver Reed stars as an outlaw who kidnaps the abused wife (Candice Bergen) of a sadistic cattle rancher (Hackman). The longer Reed holds Bergen for ransom, the more she realizes that sticking with him is a far better proposition than being returned to the vicious Hackman. Unfortunately for her, Hackman is out on a hunting trip with wealthy, bloodthirsty buddies, all of whom he's armed with wildly expensive, high-caliber rifles rendered all the more lethal by powerful telescopes. When Hackman learns Bergen's been abducted, he corrals his friends into hunting down the bandits with him. Reed's men basically ride from one killing box to another, but eventually the hunters and the hunted tap out when they realize that Reed and Hackman are locked in a duel to the death over Bergen. The film builds to a brutally nihilistic finale, by which point the men are so numbingly nasty that you don't much care who lives and who dies. But if all you need from a Spaghetti Western is to see bodies get blown full of holes by heavy-duty rifles, "The Hunting Party" will treat you right.

Lawrence Kasdan's epic 190-minute biographical Western about the life of lawman Wyatt Earp contains moments of greatness, but the filmmaker is ultimately conquered by his subject, who, as a person, just wasn't that interesting. The long-form take on Earp's life allows Kasdan to get into the man's oft-ignored backstory, which was overwhelmed by the sorrow of his pregnant wife dying of typhoid fever. An aimless, hard-drinking Earp nearly got himself hanged for stealing a horse, but was bailed out by his father on the condition that he never return home. These early scenes reunite Hackman with his "No Way Out" co-star Kevin Costner, and the two strike a very different, yet moving dynamic as a disappointed father and a wayward son whose future, heroic exploits will forever remain a mystery to the old man. Hackman's imparting of the moral lessons that will guide Earp throughout the rest of his life are close to the only dialogue spoken in the film's brilliantly cut teaser trailer scored to the main theme from Ennio Morricone's score for "A Time of Destiny." If you're a Hackman fan, you owe it to yourself to watch it.

Walter Hill's historical Western is admirably sympathetic to the cause of the great Apache leader Geronimo (Wes Studi), but the screenplay credited to John Milius and Larry Gross is too concerned with the perspective of the U.S. Army to do its title character justice. The film never comes together, but Hill's intelligent handling of the conflicted material keeps it engaging up until its tragic conclusion. Acting-wise the movie is strangely a showcase for Jason Patric, who plays Charles B. Gatewood, an Army lieutenant who respected Geronimo and sought to negotiate a respectful peace with the warrior, but he's overshadowed early on by Gene Hackman, whose General George Crook tries hard to do right by Geronimo as an enemy combatant. This is a much better movie than the two films above it, but it ranks lower than it might otherwise here due to Hackman exiting the movie early on.

Writer-director Richard Brooks tended to be a problem-picture killjoy, but after bumming out moviegoers with the feel-awful oater "The Last Hunt," the director knocked out one of the most shamelessly entertaining Westerns of all time in the star-studded "The Professionals." So when he returned to the genre in 1975 with "Bite the Bullet," Brooks once again rounded up a load of big names and delivered a spectacle that seeks to entertain first and educate second. Based on a real-life 1908 cross-country horse race that was sponsored by the Denver Post, Brooks film plays like a Western version of "The Cannonball Run." Hackman stars as a former Rough Rider who's competing for the $2,000 purse against his former cohort James Coburn, and it's nice to see him reunited with his "The Hunting Party" co-star Candice Bergen as a gentleman who doesn't view women as possessions (they have a couple of lovely scenes together). The acting is fine across the board, but it's all secondary to the spectacle of the race which Brooks stages in eye-popping locations like the White Sands National Park of New Mexico.

Sam Raimi once likened directing Gene Hackman as akin to a trip to the dentist (unpleasant, but immensely worthwhile), but that's between the director and his grouchy star. What's on the screen is all that matters, and Hackman is a malevolent hoot as the gunslinging-obsessed mayor of Redemption John Herod in "The Quick and the Dead." Unlike Hackman's Sheriff "Little Bill" Daggett in "Unforgiven," there's nothing remotely human about Herod. He cold-bloodedly guns down his own son (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the street, and, as we learn in flashback, forced a young girl (who grows up to be Sharon Stone's Ellen) to shoot her hanged father free of the noose (she accidentally shot him in the head instead). It's nefarious stuff, and Hackman revels in every second of it until he gets holes blown through his chest and skull. Aside from Lex Luthor (and even then), Herod might be the most cartoonish villain Hackman ever played, and it's pure, sneering pleasure.

"I don't deserve to die like this. I was building a house." Hackman's "Little Bill" Daggett is a tragic figure, a lawman who's so convinced of his reasonableness he can't see that he's writing his death warrant when he negotiates a horse trade as compensation for a sex worker getting her face carved up by a drunken cowboy (who was driven to violence when the young woman innocently giggled at the unremarkable size of his male member). In Bill's world, this is more than fair; for the women who make a living by doing carnal business with the men who pass through Big Whiskey, Wyoming, this is a grievous affront that will not stand.

Hackman won the 1993 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor because he played Little Bill as the hero of his own story. Bill has brought order to a once-lawless town, and there's a progressive touch to his insistence that people surrender their firearms at the city limits of Big Whiskey and get them back once they leave town. When he sadistically horsewhips Morgan Freeman's Ned, he sees it as a brutal means to an end. If these hired killers know this is what's waiting for them should they try to collect the womens' offered reward for the killing of the cowboys who assaulted their co-worker, they won't dare step foot in his town. Hackman's triumph is in letting the viewer see every cog turning inside Bill's head: we understand his predicament, and, at a base level, get his methods. And when he finds himself staring down William Munny's shotgun barrel at the end of the film, we have no doubt that we are watching the last seconds of a man who can't understand why the universe has done him such a profound injustice. He's a monster who doesn't know he's a monster. I'm not sure I've ever seen a better performance.